Although I might come across as being neat and organized….I’m actually far from.  Paperwork is a hit and miss kind of thing for me- some of it is organized in proper folders or notebooks, other papers are in various stacks throughout our house.

When I did our taxes (and a mortgage refinance) back in January, it required me to take the time to file everything away properly and clean up our office.  Since then, I’ve been slipping and our current trying-to-purchase-a-second-home ordeal has brought that organization need back to the forefront, and I’m feeling overwhelmed.  I’m sitting at my desk in the playroom at the moment- I have a pile on my left, a pile on top of the desk, and a basket of papers behind me.  Ugh.  My desk in the office is the same way- stacks of papers, bins of papers, I even have an accordian FILE of papers “to be filed”.

This is our office:

 

Good Lord, did I really just post these pictures?

How do I not like thee?  Let me count thy ways…..

First off, it’s overly cluttered with STUFF everywhere.  It’s our “junk” room- where we toss things that need to go to Goodwill, or into garage sale boxes, or even just up to the attic (like the doll toys/bin lower center).  It’s where we store empty boxes for shipping purposes, stuff that needs to be listed on ebay.  School supplies, daycare supplies, a library of children’s books.  Postage stuff.  Kids clothes to grow into.  PLUS it’s our workout room- with a treadmill, and elliptical and a bowflex….none of which have been used in at least a year.  (Someday, right?).

The desk was supposed to be temporary.  The white bookcase was one that we took out of Riley’s room but I couldn’t part with it to Goodwill.  The other bookcase is one from Trevor’s room- same thing, I couldn’t bring myself to take it to Goodwill.  And there’s a giant filing cabinet, a smaller filing cabinet, and a rolling cart that wouldn’t fit up in the attic so we put it in the office.

And the color?  Yuck.

I want a serious makeover.

I want something like this:

Open table/counter space.  Filing cabinets galore.  Shelving above.

So that got me thinking…you know, we COULD do that!  We had the Expedit bookcase in the office for a while and everything still fit in the room just fine, so I know we have at least 15″ depth on the backwall to play with.  Plus that wall has the high vaulted ceilings- so even more storage if we wanted to go all out.  And the current computer wall that houses the giant filing cabinet, the ugly desk, and funky rolling cart- we could do a super long table surface on that wall, too, with upper shelving, and if everything was matchy matchy and the same depth we’d still have room for our weight stuff in the middle.  Hmmm…..

I might be on to something…..

Stay tuned!